The Giver of Stars(66)
12
The woman of the mountains leads a difficult life, while the man is lord of the household. Whether he works, visits, or roams through the woods with dog and gun is nobody’s business but his own … He is entirely unable to understand any interference in his affairs by society; if he turns his corn into ‘likker’, he is dealing with what is his.
WPA, Guide to Kentucky
There were certain unspoken rules of society in Baileyville, and one lasting tenet was that you didn’t interfere in the private business of a man and his wife. There were many who might have been aware of beatings in their holler, man to woman, and, occasionally, the other way around, but few inhabitants would have dreamed of intervening, unless it directly infringed upon their own lives in lost sleep or disturbed routines. It was just the way things were. Words were shouted, blows were delivered, and occasionally apologies were given, or not, bruises and cuts healed and things returned to normal.
Luckily for Alice, Margery had never paid much heed to how other people did things. She cleaned the blood from Alice’s face and applied a comfrey paste to the bruises. She asked nothing, and Alice volunteered nothing, except to wince and tighten her jaw at the worst of it. Then, when the girl finally went to bed, Margery spoke discreetly to Sven and they agreed to take it in turns to sit downstairs in the small hours before dawn so that should Van Cleve come by he would find that there were circumstances in which a man might not simply drag his wife – or his daughter-in-law – home again, no matter what public embarrassment that might apparently entail for him.
Predictably, for a man used to getting his own way, Van Cleve did come by shortly before dawn, though Alice would never know that, sleeping the sleep of the profoundly shocked in Margery’s spare room. Margery’s cabin was not accessible by road, and he was obliged to walk the last half-mile so that he arrived florid and sweaty despite the snow, a torch held up in front of him.
‘O’Hare?’ he roared. And then when no answer came: ‘O’HARE!’
‘You going to answer him?’ Sven, who was making coffee, lifted his head.
The dog barked furiously at the window, earning a muttered curse from outside. In the stables Charley kicked at his bucket.
‘Don’t really see why I should answer a man who won’t give me the courtesy of a title, do you?’
‘No, I don’t believe you should,’ said Sven, calmly. He had sat playing solitaire for half the night, one eye on the door, a river of dark thoughts running through his head about men who beat women.
‘Margery O’Hare!’
‘Oh, Lord. You know he’ll wake her if he carries on this loud.’
Wordlessly, Sven handed Margery his gun and she walked to the screen door and opened it, the rifle held loosely in her left hand as she stepped out onto the stoop, making sure Van Cleve could see it. ‘Can I help you, Mr Van Cleve?’
‘Fetch Alice. I know she’s in there.’
‘And how would you know that?’
‘This has gone far enough. You bring her out and we’ll say no more about it.’
Margery stared at her boot, considering this. ‘I don’t think so, Mr Van Cleve. Good morning.’
She turned to walk back in and his voice lifted. ‘What? Wait, you don’t shut a door on me!’
Margery turned slowly until she was facing him. ‘And you don’t beat up on a girl who answers you back. Not a second time.’
‘Alice did a foolish thing yesterday. I admit tempers were running high. She needs to come on home now so we can sort things out. In the family.’ He ran a hand over his face and his voice softened. ‘Be reasonable, Miss O’Hare. Alice is married. She can’t stay here with you.’
‘The way I see it, she can do what she likes, Mr Van Cleve. She’s a grown woman. Not a dog, or a … a doll.’
His eyes hardened.
‘I’ll ask her what she wants to do when she wakes. Now I have work to get to. So I’d be obliged if you’d leave me to wash up my breakfast dishes. Thank you.’
He stared at her for a moment, his voice lowering. ‘You think you’re mighty clever, don’t you, girl? You think I don’t know what you did with them letters over at North Ridge? You think I don’t know about your filthy books and your immoral girls trying to steer good women into the path of sin?’
For a few seconds the air seemed to disappear around them. Even the dog fell quiet.
His voice, when he spoke again, was thick with menace. ‘You watch your back, Margery O’Hare.’
‘You have a nice day now, Mr Van Cleve.’
Margery turned and walked back inside the cabin. Her voice was calm and her gait steady, but she stopped by the curtain and watched from the side of the window until she was sure Van Cleve had disappeared.
‘Where the heck is Little Women? I swear I’ve been searching for that book for ages. Last time I saw it checked out was for old Peg down at the store, but she says she returned it and it’s been signed off in the book.’
Izzy was scanning the shelves, her finger tracing the spines of the books as she shook her head in frustration. ‘Albert, Alder, Allemagne … Did somebody steal it?’
‘Maybe it got ripped and Sophia’s fixing it.’
‘I asked. She says she ain’t seen it. It’s bugging me because I got two families asking and nobody seems to know where it’s gone. And you know how ornery Sophia gets when books go missing.’ She adjusted her stick under her arm and moved to her right, peering closely at the titles.